The long Halloween
by baby-blue-skull
Summary: L remembers B knows a thing or two about criminal investigations. B remembers L knows a few more about murder.


Disclamer: **I own nothing. **Only the errors of this work of fiction.

Everyone excited for the 10th year anniversary?. I got to the fandom so late but I feel entitled to be excited dammit.

Warnings: lets see how far I can push this warnings, mind fuckery, gore, small mentions of cannibalism, necrophilia and sexual assault by non cannon characteres, murder, spoilers, lots of inner monologue because I'm as shit writing conversations as I am having them, I honestly have no idea how Aleister Crowley got into my fic, not a clue. Doesn't have to slash if you don't want to take i t that way. Beyond Birthday is completely unintelligle, much like the rest of the fic.

Italics are memory snap shots and…. The year is 2002.

* * *

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters." Francisco Goya.

_They say you should visit a crime scene a hundred times. _

The room is white and rust, bright lit 47 seconds out of a minute. Small with only a table and a chair to give dimension.

The sound of keys turning and locks clinking made louder at early morning. The cool air and mist locked behind the large steel door.

This is a sanctuary.

No, this is a cell.

A man with half a face sits locked to a chair.

* * *

_Beyond Birthday he demands to be called, and L has little to protest when he himself doesn't want to be called at all._

_He's been at Wammy's House for 2 years before B arrives._

_He was a little strange from the first time. Has consistently been ever since._

_When he comes, is late autumn and not a leave in sight, part from the darkness of early nights and quick dirty days._

_L had been watching from a second story window. Small round thing with no purpose to rhyme. His toes as cold as his hands, even in mittens, that had bought a little sock-free time from Wammy, L appreciated the momentary distraction from the gentleman's tenacity over his clothing._

_He watched the staff's long shadows reach the gates before them, where stood a dark mass L supposed was another boy. He nimble on his broken nails as he savours on his tongue the orphanage's office latest conversations; _weather too cold and humid, coffee not strong enough, latest assessment for grades 6 and 7, kids sick again, world news. _No mentions in L's mental imprint of a new child._

_The new boy, and he is 86% sure it's a boy, steps on seven flowers on his way in. He can't hear what they say from this dark little corner. If he felt more than mildly curious (more irritated at this point. L is not one for surprises) he could go to the last room of the hall. Temporary closed for leaks and mold, where a ventilation shaft big enough to fit the small bones of L's rib cage, is housed, the muffled voices of the main office will be carried down by grey rats hurried in making a temporary home where poison or cruel children will never reach them._

_He rest his forehead against the glass and closes his eyes, his breath mists the sightless sight._

_L unfolds his legs from a preferred stance and goes momentarily blind, by the time enough blood has been pumped back to his brain he is down three steps on the stairs that lead directly to a hallway, left to the library and straight to the kitchen. L knows exactly how many steps of his and some of the adult workers will reach Wammy office._

_He is a cat on the dark blue carpet, and a mouse behind the walls._

_Roger Ruvie spine is straight, hands locked at his back and his legs apart twelve inches, half remembered military stance with slightly droopy shoulders. With sleep rubbed off his skin he dimly sees in his mind's eye the medals and embroidery of a navy blue jacket and matching cap._

_Roger eyes him briefly, confident the little boy will be scared off to his room by the late hour and thrown off treats. He too wonders about the late visitor and beats his desire to go back to bed and gain enough patience for another day with witty children._

_L is very small and more than a little pathetic looking, but he stands on baby blue feet at a sixty degree angle from Roger's form._

_No voice to be overheard behind the oak door of Wammy, not that he expected (not that he knows, exactly, what he expects from this, not that is real oak), the office is very large and designed more for secrecy than functionality._

_Several minutes go by and L feels Roger's thoughts like heat waves from underneath his cozy pajamas. He watches his hands clench, shoulders tense, and relax again, tense and relax like a metronome, soothing L's curiosity. If Roger were to ask him now to go to bed, L will turn and go. He doesn't._

_The door opens three inches and a sliver of yellow light grows exponentially until it paints half the opposite wall in heating color. The sound is dizzying and L's eyeballs roll in their sockets freely until they focus on Wammy's form moving behind his desk, still on his outwear, the night nurse stands somewhere far off and moves to confuse. The boy is sitting in the visitants chair, gangly legs hanging on the air, his form obscured and silent to L._

"_Go back to your room" he hears, unsure, moderate nausea rising a tad._

_L turns and hurries upstairs with the smell of burnt clover and blood orange burning his nostrils._

_He doesn't see the boy again until four days later. He smells clean as he passes by._

* * *

"Hello L" his voice doesn't have the same quality it had even in pubescent change. It's sad really, L rather liked it.

Beyond smiles the same way he kills.

"Hello B" he sits opposite to him. And that's where the opposites end. As soon as they're both sited, they are only reflection of what they were.

"Nice of you to come by. I will offer you a beverage since everyone here is too rude to do so, but alas, no one has offered _me _anything. And it's not an ask and you get deal either. I asked for a sip of your blood, just a sip, and they locked me to a table like a rabid animal. I wouldn't bite you here dear, tell them that" he plays with words and meanings like he smiles. He scratches his chin and tilts his head. L follows the action with his own head, hair falling to his eyes.

"You look well." B has burned over 43% of his body, pink and roughed interplayed with charcoal numb tissue that surely was painful to wake the dead at some point. "I meant to visit early but you were still at the hospital" he wishes to punch him, if he did not feel the cold steel around his own wrists, he chooses subtle jabs that fall off B's strong carcass instead.

"It's been long since I was fresh meat, 15 months, dear. I do not appreciate being lied to. I know you don't either." The snarl is sound where the skin stretches uncomfortably. L imagines Wammy tapping his fingers against his desk and Roger's passive-aggressive I told you so.

L lets the silence stretch and thin, he licks his lips and soon B's snake tongue slips between his lips, ready to devour.

"Are you angry B?" This was not the fallout of his master plan, but B has always been quick to adapt.

"With you? Never, love. It's how we were made, nothing wrong about that" he taps his finger on the table, shackles rattling with a thin sound and a taste of copper, once, twice, he averts his eyes to the door, pupils dilate and he's doing that thing again. The thing where he seemed demonic, or at the very least, crazy.

Burnt clover and blood orange, and he hardly notices it anymore.

"Plenty wrong with you I'd say. Wouldn't you?" and this is a game, except B laughs when he's not having fun, he only has fun when L laughs. Or is covered in blood.

Or simultaneously but L is not going into that. Not here where _he _can see.

B's anger is a long process of many miss happenings and routines. It's quiet and searing and bone dry. It touches every cell personally, nothing escapes it. B seems content right now, which has nothing to do with the slasher grin and the continuous sounds from handcuffs to table to feet to hips.

"I wouldn't know. I can see many things, but seeing myself is a complicated matter. Only in the passing of the night are we all the same kind" There's those riddles he sings, stumped down and fluttering against his ribs with a steady thump thump, off rhythm with his circulatory system.

* * *

_The orphanage main building has been standing since 1890's, where at various points in history nobody cared to read about, it had been a hospital for tuberculosis patients, an insane asylum, a war hospital, a crematorium and for many years a baptism church with a small cemetery and a large field garden. The staple past of every building in southern England with few official documents to back up the data, something above urban legends and below antique bizarre books with sketchy photographs of a girl with a ball of fire on her hands and a scrawny boy lifting a car over his head._

_What it did have, in its favor, was a small chapel with few headstones at a stretch off limits of the immediate property, a big fence blocking the way. Its paint was chapped and most of the ornaments and architectural beauty were unrecognizable. The smell of forgotten flesh heavy as you came close to it. The headstones were nameless, might have names of soldiers or priests at a time but no bodies were ever found. Or so the story goes._

_He had climbed the fence one Sunday morning while B waited on the other side. No one had ever made it this far but B was really good at disappearing and L was even better at being invisible. _

_B's first growth spur had given him 4 inches and only twice as many pounds, but he was fast and agile while L had remained very much a child with darker eye circles. They didn't bring shovels to find bodies, L was sure if there had been, Wammy most have had them removed before bringing any children, the question remained on why would he leave the tombs._

"_Let's go to the chapel" B was very enthusiastic, confident they would find something _peculiar_ in this place. L rather enjoyed ghost stories, only when B were the one to tell them, he had been running low on inspiration lately he said, gazing for hours at the time to this lonely piece of land with an itch under his skin, burning when he flexed his elbows, waking him up at night where the bones peaked._

_The doors were several pieces push together by force of gravity and spiritualism. A large chain pitching in some. L knocked on the wood twice and dust litter their noses and scratched their eyes, the knocking echoed inside the church and inside their heads, a knocking of the skull. _

"_Refrain from doing that in the future" B moved his long limbs in several directions with lighting speed, for another way in, surely a building as old and neglected as this has to have a broken window or a back door, safety reasons and such._

"_We can kick down the door" It didn't seem very sturdy but they were children with not much of a fight in them._

"_What kind of church doesn't have another exit?" B scratches his head, looking less dangerous and more or less sane for the moment._

"_The kind Wammy wouldn't want us near it. The kind not even the authorities touch. Why not demolish the building and build over it? Why leave the empty tombs? Someone can kick down the door and hide here, behind an orphanage." They hadn't even gone in and L's curiosity lead them, a mystery, at their backyard. B being scared. It was such a nice day._

"_Do you think if we hit with a rock Wammy won't hears us. We're far enough anyway" there are few rocks on this side, L considers hitting the door with a grave first than going back and forgetting about all this._

"_It could work. The chain is too old to hold up"_

_And so they spend six minutes each trying to break the chains and being unheard. With their arms soared and their spirits deflected they made their way back to the fence, noting dimly how no vegetation grew on this side, granted no one water or planted and much less took care of the land, but not one bad weed on one dirty pool of water. Only a tree, large and dry grew over the cemetery, the branches blackened scratching the back of the church, the air making wheezing weeps. A black raven perched on the fence, but no other bird further than that._

_B pushed at L's feet as a louder crash turned their heads three quarters south. Around the corner, three rusty links waved at them._

_Making their way back on shaky legs and lips pressed in a scream, the door wide open, greeted them. Two large columns of what was mistaken for marble marked the only entrance, there were no windows, just a small room with a thick layer of dust and snow crusted on the inside corners. A long narrow strip of carpet of one color or another made a path from the entrance to some kind of altar where a deity is supposed to stand and judge. Mold covered most of the woody pattern. The air was thick and dipped on some points with something alike a scare choir vibrating in panes of light. The walls made tricks on their senses. Lined with large handmade paintings, symbols made of straight lines over twisted intentions. 72 black over white scattered in an undisclosed order. A grander one at the far left of the small podium. A large circle with words in something and latin following infinity, another circle that draw a limit to stars with too many peaks. The letters too smudged to be learned._

"_The triangle of Solomon. Impressive" L's words fall with heaviness, B can scarcely hear him. The darkness draws a breath, learning their scent._

"_Aleister Crowley in our very own orphanage. I feel honored sir" he did a small reverence, interest burying their initial and reminiscent fright._

_A little more confident with the knowledge of what they were dealing with (instead of running) they continued their exploration, shrugging dead spiders and ceremonial magicke._

"_If we're already cursed for going in we should earn a good one. All the way through a thousand generations, I want my great great great great grandkids to spit at my grave when they birth little dragons." He lost B from his sight for few darkened seconds, when he resurfaced with yellowed pages in his hands, standing at the side of what look like, and very possibly was, a hidden grave._

_L takes the pages, careful not to rip them. _

"_ephrix erõti periarchés d' aneptoman__  
__iõ iõ pan pan__  
__õ pan pan aliplankte, kyllanias chionoktypoi__  
__petraias apo deirados phanéth, õ__  
__theõn choropoi anax"_

_"Stop" B seemed to gather enough strength to stop the turning of the world, very real under their feet. "Let's go. We learned all we could" his voice like the wind blowing._

_No one noticed their absence, just that each boy showered several times during the night._

* * *

L's knees were drawn up over his chair, he felt the knob of his knee cap pushing at the skin of his neck as he swallowed, B's eyes followed the working of his muscles, violence singing in his clenched hands.

"Have trouble sleeping again I see. It is the moon that keeps you up and around? if you sing at the creases of the sky you make the world stop, cherry pop." As a general rule, the more pet names B manages to slip into a conversation including gore, the more displeased he is.

"I'm leaving for Japan, soon." L's lungs are underwater, half his brain already at the other side of the world, half served on a platter with cherry glaze as B folds a napkin over his lap.

"Oh goody. Do bring me something if you're ever so kind. I'm fond of their pastries, maybe a pair of those vending machine panties. And tea, most definitely some tea, please. Coffee, tea, and me. Those you won't find afar, take the flight down and stay, my lost little lamb."

He lets the petition fall on dead eyes. Waits a beat and a half because he knows B's rhythms and he knows when he's next to strike.

"I howled at the dead of night and bathed with a thousand virgins to get you to come to LA, my wingless angel. What kind of mermaids is Japan breeding that you have to eye yourself. I need you here, when I dream of you, you always stay, cold and awake."

"Your ego is no match for your poet heart B. Glad that hasn't been burned out of you"

B nods gravelly, makes fireworks out of it. _ An un-private detective, a detective without an ego. _L's toes curl on each other.

"Interpol has closed all lines of communication outside of the country. I was confident that with the development of the world wide web you have managed to be familiar with the comings and goings of villain rivalry. I overestimated you sadly."

"I would never lie to you loved one" B smiles with a vengeance, small points of his canine glimmer behind his closed lips. "My little monster and I, we go together by hand, we burned our makers or so we want. What is life outside this walls? is what we have here, with steel and words, you're the bite of a kitten when you look at me like that, you need me to scare away the snakes because I bit some tails. But these pathologies might not be an invention of my own, I'm artist but not a lair, I create what I see and sculpt of what I know, and might be those symptoms come from my muse. You do make mistakes my pretty, and I do love to point them out. A projection with a signature, I humbly provide the screen, don't blink or you might miss."

L wants to stand and leave. Small chance (16%) that B actually knows something useful that doesn't rhyme.

"I assure you I'm not projecting onto you."

"Oh don't assure me, love. I'm not sure of anything anymore." He hunches over the table and interlocks his fingers. His hair is sparse and colorless. "Why would I peel your eyes for good when I can do so for fun? If I got it I won't share it. I keep secrets where you keep criminals. Prison is where sharing won't have it. What do you offer this crazy that the next wont? It's a killers code after all. Like bros but you know, blood on your whore and all that gore"

L slides some files half way to the table. It's a wonderland he's venturing, neon lights and tall trees, and you follow the shadows on this side. Too small or too large, you never got what you want. B takes the manilas with the tip of his burnt fingers, odorless at the hour of the wolf.

"Drip it from your lips, cupcake. Feed me like a birdie for my wings to spread" he gnarls his entrails in surprise ribbons that glimmer when exposed, this is a private gift only for L's system.

L puts down both feet to the floor, an exposing mirth widens slightly B's eyes, coagulated blood swamps. B doesn't follow for now, passing the microphone to L and is his turn of this charade. L hunches closer, hands together under his chin and he peers ever so charming to the beast.

"I need your help B. I do, not Japan, not the world whose filth you know of. This is not something I know but you've always hidden the best tales, and, I think, this is one I'm ready to hear" B huddles closer, eyes bulging and snicker wildly controlled. He's been waiting to pour out secrets or he's humoring L, either will be useful at this point.

"Story telling loli, where the princess is the killer, fools the village to kill the prince, and the ogre was only trying to help. Where is your monster?" the files have fell and open in a pool of blank paper planes.

"Our monster comes from within" B snarls in mockery, he'd expected L knew this long ago, he does. L can play too. "Heart attacks. 52 of them just this past week" If time where a matter that concern B, he will not nod in agreement. "I suspect more, up in the hundreds. Most convicted criminals, clad in prison uniforms, clutching their chest and wrinkle the skin behind. More heaving than breathing. Previously healthy harden criminals reduced to their knees, over what?"

B reclined back, he would have take his arms to the back of his head for a supported stretch if it hadn't been for the chains. The grin never fell off his face.

"Most are not all, all secrets were something more before being named. Give me names and give me swords, patron of my sins" L idly wonders how many nicknames can B come up in the hour he scheduled., and how many would sting like this one.

"A news coverage of a hostage situation in a day care center. 26 minutes and they were released. The man waved his gun at a shopping district before taking some kids hostage. Heart attack, no precedents. No heart disease, cholesterol, family history, nothing. Fell dead."

"Boring if it hadn't been for 51 more wolves to be hanged before the sheep." B hums in delight before turning to a childish tune. "Careful what you do, cause God is watching your every move"

* * *

_B is thirteen. For now he is passionate about filing Wammy's old records and polishing his shoes, the grown man makes small remarks of the unnecessarily of it all, if B wants something he should ask for it (and be promptly denied). L sucks a lollipop in the large blue armchair, it looks like velvet but is scratchy where it meets his neck. B lifts a box of dust that may have some papers on it and goes on his way to the attic, the attic where all things one must forget go. L leaves his candy on the desk and follows him. Neither hear Wammy's word, nor his sigh._

_L is several steps behind and shudders because their keeper doesn't understand them at all. B is not going to ask for something, it's not how he's wired. He's going to do something and make no apology for it and that is why he tries to keep on Wammy's good side for now, give him time to figure him out and stop him. It's the thrill of the chase._

_The attic is well lit from 10am to 4pm, and vast somewhere in the middle of those hours. The tiles are a deep burgundy with some cracks, where fingers of light reach out to warm small faces. There was a black cat living here at some point, some of its dropping are found with a sole from time to time. There are few boxes, all much like the one B just dropped nosily, a rocking chair too frail to hold even the smallest child waits besides a mirror half cover with a blanket. The rest of the misfit population are a fare share of paintings with ragged sheets of plastic, there are two sculptures; one of a vulture over a stag with no horns and the other one is incomplete, or abstract, none of them are pretty or particularly artistic. L knows is not from the sixteen resident child artists, only one of them makes (tiny) sculptures. There are 8 compasses nailed to the walls all going south, they're not broken though. A chandelier made of crystal spiders is hanging on the back of the room and a globe with the constellations in greek behind a battered desk._

"_Heard you were getting this room. We're too old to be the three of us cramped up in our room. A and I will keep the litter. You'll get that desk and the demon cat" B studies the drawers, they're locked but so old they give out easily._

"_Where did you hear that? Wammy has not yet informed me of such" He doesn't want to live here, this is the dark little corner of everything too bizarre to be wanted. A jar of neon powder and fire ants rolls from under the desk like a welcoming sign. Three accounting books on the drawer underneath it. "I'm not going to live here"_

"_I can live here with you. They can lock us both in a hole at the same time and save up on cement." A glass breaks somewhere underneath them and a pigeon coo outside. The room is not livable, a tarantula hangs over their heads, its legs wiggling in anticipation. B swats it away._

_B broke L's wrist last month and it crackles when he types, it's a lullaby of late nights and time. It's how the spider's exoskeleton sounds like._

"_Did you sent the report on your slovak prince already? "B only interest in fairy tales is to put the names of horrific criminals and picturing them in long flowing wigs. The Slovak prince in question was not a man to take no, not even from the dead, wore socks on his hands to kill. _Life is a fucked up joke isn't it?

_L had been typing the report last night, before the crave for grapes lead him to the kitchen. He hasn't finished it, stayed up all night with B making one dimensional snow men with the socks from the Laundromat._

"_Not yet. I want to interview him." The floor creaked with his beat up sneakers, shoe laces untied. Interviews are his favorite part of the job, the puzzle done but for the main piece and he learns so much but Wammy doesn't take him often, sneaking out of orphanages and into prisons are his specialty now._

"_Ask him what's so good about socks. Probably nothing. Rubber stamp him crazy he has long to live" his hands juggle a glass figurine of earthy colors. After a few minutes, the room and its habitants may not be that strange after all._

"_I want to go there, see him. I can't know him from here. How would I see the next one like him?" the man's name stirs acrid waste and formaldehyde under his nails, he chews at them and it slips down, past his lips like clotted lead. Except the smell is real, he knows in the way B wrinkles his nose. _

_He kicks a lone cabinet where a crushed cat skull with hanging prune lumps like ornaments on a Christmas tree is hidden._

_Beyond laughs, like the cat would have if it would live, it's all jokes and fun now._

"_I know what we can do"_

* * *

"Do you want to know what I did to her arm?" he means Backyard Bottomslash, her left arm and right leg were severed post mortem, the leg was found in the bathtub, not enough blood on it to know if it would float or sink.

"You ate it" he doesn't bat an eyelash, B's smirk grows into Joker territory, washed out in green. He started smoking. In a maximum security prison, ward for the criminally insane with 24 hour security of white. He is not surprised.

"Garnish it with strawberries" sweet and sour, or what taste does crude flesh leaves, doesn't seem like one the dish washer will clean. "Left the bird bones clean" B used to call him bird bones when the sun birthed and closed and misery poured. "Feed the brain, feed the soul, greens for your glory. You look pale lucky charm" half full cups of tea litter his office, he licked sugar off his palm this morning but B's aura disquiets him. It's best to go to him empty.

"Kira, is what it's been named. From the word killer" L had been expecting a better name, he passes a hand through his hair before he catches himself and lowers it, his peripheral vision is being reflected back at him. "Tell me what you think of it"

L has received few blows to his head but he's fairly sure (96%) of the rules of the game.

"Where did the love go" B's head goes from side to side until the edges of his bones go fuzzy. L thinks he misses his hair. "Daddy above is mad at his babies. They broke the dynasty vase and flush it down the toilet"

"This is not divine work B." the man in the blue jumpsuit keenly forgets that.

"Your boy surely thinks so. Stand on his toes and he can reach the sky. And still have the eye to call us mad." He can feel the way B wants to reject this killer, he can't stand being out of focus, but L needs him, has told him so, has come wearing his favorite shirt with three blood drops on the inside of the collar, has bend his neck and strain his legs just to get a few words out of guess work and jokes.

"Not a boy. Not anymore. He's growing up, figuring out what it is to be man" He offers the head so B can catch the tail, rolls his shoulders back until they creak.

"Yes, well, we all go through that stage. Murder is a great catalyst for morals." The nail beds on his fingers are a dark shade of purple, but the murderer inspects them with the scrutiny of a korean manicurist.

"His ambition will not falter. Despite killing only criminals, that we're aware of, his motivations is nothing of noble. He doesn't want to save the world, or avenge the dammed. Murder and power is his agenda, but he masquerades it with his strong sense of justice. He is Japanese, or hiding there. I just need to prove it to bring the Japanese police force to my side"

"Working with native witches to burn the one who fell off the broom. Getting old there, cupcake?" L is not yet sure if his plan will work, only 67%.

B's eyes get glazed for a moment, the lights flicker a second too long and L has the distinct feeling that the sun will rise on the wrong side tomorrow and his experiment will give him sufficient proof, and some.

"Alrighty then, back to the hunt. So 17-18 year old, good kid at school, strong family core, good grades, good manners. John Doe with possibly fabulous hair. Why am I here for? Oh right three murders." He rolls his eyes and smacks himself on the forehead, it's great entertainment, if he didn't know the rest of the lyrics, L takes the stage now, finally getting somewhere.

"He uses his free time of dutiful son and student to kill criminals. Childish, hates to lose" B smiles at his words, and bites his left thumb. L follows with the right one. "He believes he can change everything and everyone around him to his will"

"Egocentric. No, the unholy grandmother of Narcissus. Megalomaniac, no spikes crown tho. Not one for symbolism hm, count me on your side cookie dough" he makes the thumbs up sign, framing the wide grin of pale gums and sharp teeth. "You know this boy" it's rare to find so many dark valleys in someone's face with the clinical lights, but B's face is a work of grays and purples, and bulging queer eyes, teeth from ear to ear.

"I know how he thinks" the practicing detective wishes he could have sweet lemon tea and jelly beans, his fingers twitch to find them. "I don't know how he kills"

"No evidence behind, kid is good at his craft"

"He leaves no evidence because he is not present for the crime. I think he kills from a distance. From the comfort of his office or his home, with the smell of mom's cookies like a reward for being such a good boy."

"What does he needs to kill? Their sins, got some special eyes to determine if your naughty or nice?"

"Do you?"

B laughs again. It was said around the orphanage that he practiced his laugh, the reaper coming to town.

It certainly paid off.

"Little boy is playing God, but fire can only be burnt when there's nothing left to burn." His words are like a scythe.

"You did God's work too. Or that of a helper"

"I only killed those whose numbers were up. An innocent will die before the wise and the devil will always rise" L is getting closer to truth, knowledge men is not meant to know of. There's a scream in the back of his head, buried and laced around gyrus and sulci of the infra-limbic cortex.

L scoots closer, so close their breath mingle and frost, blood pacts and star neurosis.

"You know something about this killer" he whispers, he had arranged to be left without guards, cameras, not a speck of witness. The prison will have no record of him going in or out, no one had seen him, and B will go on his drugged routine of a manic killer.

B immediately over reacts, shock and mock and this is how he relates to reality.

"Even if it isn't about this one, it could be the next, or the one after that. Who prays over us when we sleep? When you look at me, over my head, what do you see? I want to know B, show me like I've show you all of me"

"I'm not God Lawliet, I only got the devil's bargain" his nose touches his for a blink and he goes back to his chair, L notices unconcerned how he is almost sprawled over the table. "Words that were meant to be half whispered, falling in between universes, and all you've seen will be gone forever"

L must have blinked a few times, tracing his steps, of mere seconds ago, they had each been sitting at different sides of a table, and all he knows is that B's hand are porous and cupping his face, his pupils shrink and all he sees is blood, his blood, pumping in B's broken veins. Down from him, dawn at night, a pair of cuffs are disregarded away from them. But impossible is not an option anymore, he wants the Pandora box dissected.

"Somewhere there's a fight, pushing me down, rolling around, keep the better part of me closed. It was easy coming back to you when I figured it out" he leans closer, impossibly closer, a tongue caresses the inner shell of his ear. "I want to tell you a tale of Shinigamis"

* * *

"_There is finite number of crimes, ever changing as the laws, not just murderers" L scratches blood from his fingernails with a needle while B gathers the bloody bits of an undernourished pig. It might have been sick before B drugged him unconscious and handed L a knife._

"_I know. They do cover most of our work load. Worry not dear, I've made arranges in the near future. We'll need some sack with dollar signs because we're rubbing a casino" his tone might suggest they just won the jackpot. B has no interest in money, or even death (the pig is now at rest), he, and L too, just want to be entertained._

_The blood splatter is warm on his face, like a mother's kiss. He is holding photographs of the stains on the walls and the pool on the floor, the narration of a broken vessel and the recordings of B's baritone voice _A detective most know it all, good and bad are on blurred lines. It's a minefield everywhere you look, justice that is.

It's not a sense of justice B. I won't admit (not yet) that it's just fun for me. You enjoyed mysteries and epidemic lock downs. I like solving cases. And by its meaning, I won't play fair, I'd lie and cheat and steal because I'm a child and I hate losing.

_The training at the House is brutal. L drinks books and carbon pictures and remembers every word, every detail. B can do much the same. This does not ease the load considerably. L spends days hunched over crime scenes reconstructions, going over evidence bags and microscopes with B clutching a magnifying glass. In theory L is the teacher, and B now knows velocity blood splatter, can identify the gun by the size of the bullet hole, fight or flight instinct, profiles for the psychotic and how to work with the authorities in charge._

_B has another training for L, he takes him to morgues and hospitals and steals farm animals and spend nights opening and closing, pulling out guts and counting knife wounds. Determining causes of death and _Why did this man had to die? Why today? Why this way? _Became _How would you have killed this man L? _and then further._

_Lady justice holds a scale and has her eyes covered. L is all-seeing. Too much._

_B thinks he should know both sides of the scale, a side that travels in time, where a crime scene was not fibers and prints, but a living thing and L should not be so disturbed to think of the living. So B shows him life before he can think of death. He takes animals so L can kill them and understand. L doesn't like the feeling of blood on his hands, warm and pulsing, even if the animals don't suffer. "I'd be a terrible killer, you'll catch me in a second." B laughs genuinely amused and L might have smiled a little. _

_B kills a chicken without getting a speck of blood on him and L is so dizzy he doesn't notice B holding him by hand and taking him to sit down against the wall._

_B was the recoil of a gun and L was motion sickness._

_The next day there's a stomach virus circling the air of the classrooms. L skips class for the day and takes B to a crime scene. Crime never rests._

"_With a culprit like this" the boy detective says as he docks the yellow tape crisscrossed over a safe perimeter. He is not working this case as L, but a smaller local alias, the police is handling it very well even with the budget cuts. "who made an effort to not be taken as ephemeral art work" L is talking of art work in a crime scene, describes the crime as art, B smirks internally. L picks the door and tips more crime scene tape in his passing. "they will always come back. This is their body of work, he's an artist and he can't resist to see it again, and what is of most importance is to witness the reactions it will cause. He knows" they stand on the wake of a long highway, steps away from being where good intentions curdled. "he knows behind grief and disgust, there will be awe. He aches to find it, but he is patient" The wooden floor, a whirlpool of mold, creaks beneath their polypropylene shoe covers. "he'll insert himself into the investigation, 12% he is an actual police man, on desk duty, he won't go to crime scenes, not anymore. 84% he is someone working on the station. Well respected but overlooked, few people remember his name and none knows of his interests, he believes he is an interest character, worth knowing with nothing less than a bang" _

_The house is rundown with graffiti over most surfaces that are not walls, a hole in the ceiling the size of a small sofa, at the brink a nest of birds with no eggs and several feathers that the winds blows inside different rooms of the drug dealers' house._

_No one will ignore him after this._

_6 men were killed, all with long rap sheets on various counts of theft, armed assault, drug dealings and possession and one with a pending sexual assault trial. The furniture of the room has been arranged (did the killer bring some of these? This is not even a temporary home, no reason for gang bangers to have dining tables and individual desks) to simulate a courtroom. _

_The criminals' hands had been crudely cut and placed over two desks put together on the place where the accused and it's lawyers would be if this tribunal were factual. One man had his right arm severed and had been draped with sheets the color of watered vanilla a long sword on his other arm, where six pair of eye balls were pierced, behind him, a row of men with no head hanged from their stretched arms, the skin sliced to hang like bat wings. One of them had stab wound of the crotch of his pants._

_The heads were missing, blood was thick, and there was too much room for error. _

_The man did come back and found L hiding under the bed and put a gun to his head, B shot him in the leg and they fleeted._

_L's clothes were ruined but B got away with only three small drops of blood on the inside on his shirt. L doesn't think they're from shooting the man._

_Later when they were head for head and slouch for slouch, they switched medications and B fell asleep and L fell quiet._

* * *

"If I could fall into the past, do you think time will pass me by. You know I'd walk a thousand miles if I could just see you" B's singing voice is more like blazing charcoal. L wouldn't have minded if B had finished the story he promised.

"Music scene in LA is getting infectious, I'd hope the criminally insane to be spared. You suffer enough as it is, no?"

"Gospels and chants and some screams when the lights go out the monster crawl out, but we're gonna be fine"

L bites the inside of his cheek, his nails are raw flesh. "What of Shinigamis B?"

"A shock when I get shocked at the hospital by the doctor when I'm not cooperating, when I'm rocking the table while he's operating, you waited this long now stop debating"

L thinks the story is going to be long and full of the metaphysical lure of the books L wrote, full of the tales beyond told him of. Not one mention of Shinigami, grim reaper, death angel, or any other personification. He had purposely avoided the subject until now.

B clears his throat and lost some of the manic energy he's been reloading with.

" A Shinigami is Japanese term for the familiar and worldly know death god, death magnet, the gate keeper, the spiritual equivalent of inappropriate hawaiian shirts. Direct correlation with humans. In Buddhism they were described as demons, were a human encounter one, he or she would be possessed with the urge to commit suicide; another description mentions them as demons who decide our time of death. They are not mentioned a great deal in Japanese literature and their existence was vaguely wondered, upon fleeting lovers and misinterpretations of the words and meaning and that's how it always is. During the Edo Period they were mostly described as evil spirits, people who had died with a vengeance and strength of mind who haunted the place where they died to invite other unto tainting it with fresh blood, thus a lot of suicides on the same place. They had never been seen by human, or at least not one that stayed alive, I find that their most accurate descriptions are found on fiction and art"

B has done extensive research. Collecting scraps of paper with anything remotely related with the mythical creature. Search stories of sightings (all false, B investigated them), reading after reading and he can say he's an expert of something no one has anything concrete about.

"I'm aware of the concept of the Gods f Death" B knows he knows and nods. "These Gods don't care for human actions if I'm correct, I'm not fully familiar with the concepts but I'd hardly jump to assume this spree of evil men killings is of their making"

The career criminal tilts his head and scratches one foot with the other. They're sitting like people for once, both of them. Wammy would be proud. Except one of them is in prison and the other just employed a conman to deal with the Florence police.

"Would you lie? Would you run away? Am I in too deep? Have I lost my mind? I don't care, you're here tonight. I can be your hero baby, I can kiss the pain away, I will stand by you forever, you can take. my. breath. away." Serious time is over it appears.

This is B's way of telling him to shut up. This is B's grand act and he's prepared for it and no insipid little detective is going to befoul it.

"I'll wait" L tell his distressingly white hands. B always like him best submissive.

"Run" and L lifts his eyes a little "just as fast as I can to the middle of nowhere, to the middle of my frustrated fear and I swear you're just like a pill" a drug I will gladly take, every day every time "You keep making me ill"

* * *

_One hundred and sixty eight children reside in the House. One doctor and his nurse wife have their own room on the property, along with six housekeepers and two night guards, Wammy, Roger, the financial keep and a few other people they've only heard of but not seen live on the far east building of the large property. The central building (the old church-hospital-Batman cave) is the school, it does have a room where kids of all religions can go and pray and be thought if they wish._

_A psychiatrist visits, and old acquaintance of the doctor, and L for the life of him can't understand why are the children so excited. He huddles in a kitchen cabinet behind two boxes of honey nut cheerios and jars of jam bought at the harbor. _

_CeCe, a girl with thick dark hair and middle east accent, open the cabinet to grab a jar of orange jam, smears her toast and doesn't pay him any mind._

"_Dr. Rossau is asking for you" her chin is smeared with a little dib of chocolate, she is twelve pounds overweight and the nutritionist warned her about eating between meals. L will keep her secret if she keeps his. "I haven't seen you"_

"_Thank you" he has been taught manners even when his tongue tangles up. "Why would anyone want to talk to a psychiatrist" he's been working as a detective on and off for over five years and words on the hallways echo that L can see inside men's minds. They make him feel like a gipsy with a crystal ball and treat him like he feeds on bad men's brains, so he must be bad himself._

"_I think, everyone wants to know that someone out there understands them" the girl washes the spoon and she's the fourth kid that has spoken to him in three years, she is fairly new and unsure at best, she's heard the stories but is smart enough to play over the see to believe._

_When rumors first started spreading a tall kid with a thick neck grabbed him by the front of his shirt, the boy had an interest in aerodynamics and was working with the air force but otherwise he was a brute. If L had been the witch with a raven crown he was accused of, he would have done a lot worse than read the boy out loud, the boy had the mental barriers of a teenage diary with a cheap plastic lock and apparently wasn't too comfortable with his own insecurities and not all repented for his petty crimes to come dry out._

_L was a bad boy who could see bad man and anyone that talks to him is therefore, a bad person._

_The girl is long gone by the time there's a quiet knock on the door._

"_Go away B"_

_B was tall and lean, with a mop of shiny black hair (small asian heritage) and large dark eyes. He was a handsome boy, his secrets overlooked._

_He doesn't knock twice and instead opens the next cabinet and crawls in boneless, bend at impossible angles and joints over joints._

"_French fancy fool is looking for you"_

"_I'm busy" he should be. Has six cases to work with and he is a well establish detective in western Europe with a growing workload on America. He needs to call the FBI's violent crime unit at six but if he goes out of here, the village will chase him with open fire and rakes._

"_He was looking for me too" B hasn't been seen for a few days. He works in cycles of detective work and mathematics. B is fond of numbers._

"_What did you do?" the flexible boy is not misbehaved._

"_I bit the nurse last Thursday, got a big chunk of her calve off"_

"_Why?"L is not curious but B will talk his ears off if he doesn't respond. This is the lesser of evils._

"_I wanted to know what her tendons look like. I didn't see them if that was your next question. I should sharpen my teeth" they can barely see what the other is doing in the dark, hushed tones but no one is around._

"_French fancy fool will call you a half-demonic beast roaring lakes hungry for human flesh" his tone is flat and the air is bitter._

_Weeks later with dusk setting early and cold seeping down the smallest cracks, kids and L didn't doubt some of the adults thought of B crazy._

_The boy kind of looks like a vampire, and laughs at odd times, but B is the sanest kid L knows. There is knowledge and horror in him. He understands things no one else does, no else knows, and so much more. And he dressed them like stories of ghouls and souls and death days and macabre, and he will tell them from the foot of his bed until they fell asleep on the rare occasion. L slept less and less these days, sure of the suspended matter that gathered in a shapeless form over his bed, watching him sleep, closer each time. When close to waking he could hear it, a distinct sound that might be a laugh and might be whatever B is trying to sound like. He'd heard of other kids with shadows on their round faces and jittering of limbs, experimenting a similar episode, being watched and nails over chalk from the other side._

_A girl died that week. B went to her funeral all in white. L didn't go._

* * *

If L believed him or not is not B's problem anymore. He knows the detective doesn't think of him as crazy, yet he was send to the white palace instead of the chair. He wouldn't know a world without B.

Not even when the man with a life where no shoe laces were allowed planned, orchestrated and polished three murders and a suicide attempt with the strings of L's fingers. On B's hands.

"Did you kill A?" L asks the proverbial wisdom from rainy years behind. LA is sunny and an entire lifetime away, but A's ghost will always haunt them. The proverbial child.

B doesn't spare a beat. He's never been asked this.

A was not a dramatic teenager. He had short blond hair and the sea in his eyes. He spend three weeks drinking nothing but green tea and never ever again. He had the best basketball score in Winchester. He shared a room with the top students of the House. A, B, L.

When he hanged himself in the room he was alone, sheets knotted, a whisper (a threat) traveled in the death of night. Neither L or B were found in the property. Both showed up for the funeral, days later, with no answers, and B disappeared after that.

"A killed himself. Weren't you there? You should know that?" B's smile is dumb, this game is dumb, A killed himself and B killed three people and L needs to remember.

"Don't you feel responsible, honey dip. I will if I were you, so glad I'm not you" B goes on and on, his laugh is raspy in the latter half of his throat and mean all the way out.

"I don't. A was diagnosed with depression months behind. Suicidal ideation hadn't been reported at the time but he had denied almost all means of communication. He was bound to do something drastic soon enough" the pale detective can hear his former roommate clench his jaw.

"Are we still talking about A?" ashes on L's tongue, dripping blood orange and burnt clover from behind.

"A commit suicide. Not me. Not you, B" Beyond's smile is broad and ugly, the burns barely change that.

"Did you kill A, L?" L's legs cram, if he stood the spell will be broken.

B's transition is smooth, a twisting of wrists, change the angle and subtle liquid shift and they are two different people with very little alike.

L can send the room into a frantic state of silent disquiet.

"You made me kill him" it's morbid beauty that compels him to stay, subtle and entirely missed. It's too easy for him to fill the edges, stare into the abyss and never blink.

" A killed himself. What happened to the mouse?" years later he send Misora Massacre to chase his secrets. Wammy spoke little of it, asked him only twice what happened after the –unfortunate death- . They both disappeared but L knows B wasn't with him and nothing more than that.

"A died and you left, B. You said his numbers were up" B thinks L might just believe him after all. He's so proud.

The pendulum swings to one side a second two long before it goes to shit. Lost its footing and fell and crack.

B closes in on him, hand clutching the weary bones on L's own too tight , he looks almost sympathetic to L, a mimic of it.

"A was to die one way or another." L's eyes go humid. He hasn't cried since infancy and he doesn't now.

B had loved A, and he gave him to L.

* * *

_L was first to go inside B's LA apartment after his arrest. Is how the killer would have wanted._

_There's an infinity of mirror pieces. Four walls and a sky of jagged reflections._

_Some pieces are clear, others murky, graying, blood stained, color fused, even fun house mirrors with no sense of proportion on them._

_All reflections were different:_

_A shadow, large and blacker than black, winged and feathered._

_A murderer, red teeth and crooked fingers._

_A victim with wet eyes pooling at its feet._

_An upside down clock._

_Body._

_Parts._

_Various stages of decomposition._

_A boy lost and found._

_A detective, not an inch of him clean._

_Tall and humanoid._

_Wide in the blink of an eye._

_A cat with blue green worms wiggling in its guts._

_Clean boy unclean sheets._

_Unseen._

* * *

_._

_If I could see the death of the world._

_._

* * *

"Will you visit me again?" the best lies always had the foundation of truth, deconstructed to rise again sharp and twisted. One of them was the truth, the other one the impostor, the mimic.

One is wearing a prison jumpsuit with numbers and letters over a right breast pocket, various degree burns litter his skin, sparse hair, eyes like spilled wine. One is clad in an old flannel shirt with hidden blood, skin staggering white, coal hair, mirror eyes. The guard should be coming to get him out soon from now. Who will go out? L wasn't sure anymore.

L breaks the mirror and stands.

"We don't have much time" the moving man ignores that he understands the meaning of the doomed words, the doomed days.

B watches him leave one last time. Over his head a halo of crimson floats for only him to see. He follows the creases of the shirt, makes emblem of them on his memory, the peaks his shoulder blades make, like amputated wings. L was his colorless angel.

Only one person leaves the prison walls. That person is L, and he is not sure of who he was, which letter, but he knows who he is now and what he must do.

He leaves for Japan the next morning.

Two years later, after B has died (a heart attack, L's blood boiled that day), A has rotten away, he's seen shinigamis, knows there's a realm filled with them, a killer chained and unchained to him, and holds a harmless book on his own hands.

He understands everything now.

He understands B's riddles with no answers, why A had to die, why Light Yagami picked up a book and started the grandest killing of history, he understand why Shinigamis love apples, he understands that its all a big fucked up joke.

His chest shrinks, his heart stops, and he dies before he can laugh.


End file.
